Forty people have drowned in France since last Thursday as a record-breaking heatwave tightened its grip on Europe, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said, with victims including a 13-year-old girl who could not swim and two young children found dead inside a family car.
France, Spain and Italy have been hardest hit by the extreme temperatures. France experienced its hottest June day on record on Tuesday, reaching an average of 29.8C, while its hottest night was recorded on Monday at a minimum average of 21.6C, according to Météo France. More than half of the country is on red alert. In Spain, temperatures are set to peak above 40C, with red alerts in Andalusia, Cantabria and the Basque Country. State weather service Aemet says June heatwaves are becoming increasingly common, with 10 recorded in mainland Spain between 2000 and 2025, compared with just two in the previous 25 years. In Italy, a red heatwave alert has been declared in 15 cities, including Rome, Milan, Florence, Turin and Venice – conditions that can pose health risks even to healthy adults.
“Forty people have drowned in France since Thursday as a record heatwave sweeps Europe; Foreign Office warns travellers.”
"It's not something to be taken lightly, going swimming in unsupervised areas during a heatwave," Sports and Youth Minister Marina Ferrari told French radio, warning that too many people were cooling off in rivers and canals without understanding the risks. Among the fatalities was a 13-year-old girl who went for a dip with her family in the River Seine at Fontaine-La Port on Sunday evening, although she did not know how to swim. A young professional footballer remains in critical condition after being pulled from the River Rhône in a park near Lyon; emergency services rescued four young men who got into difficulty in an area where swimming is banned. Two children aged two and four were found dead in their family car in a car park in the southern city of Carpentras on Monday, also blamed on the extreme heat.
France’s national weather service placed 54 areas under a red heatwave alert. In a country without widespread air-conditioning, schools, trains and sporting events remain affected. The Foreign Office on Tuesday afternoon issued updated advice for anyone travelling to Spain, Portugal or France, warning of serious health risks and an increased danger of wildfires. It referred travellers to the Travel Health Pro website, noting that extreme heat can cause dehydration, overheating and heatstroke.
Aemet meteorologist Rubén del Campo said Spain, which has experienced increasingly torrid summers, is only going to get hotter because of climate change, as heatwaves become more frequent, longer and appear outside the traditional July-August window. Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent, with temperatures increasing twice as fast as the global average since the 1980s, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. Over the last four years, more than 200,000 people across Europe died from heat-related causes, the World Health Organisation’s Europe office said this month, and most of those deaths were preventable.